A1260…

[eyoungren]

So, thought I would finally post this now that everything's settled out with this Mac.

Thanks to @bobesch I was sent a 15" A1260 he had on hand with a US keyboard. Took about a month and a half to arrive but got here in perfect condition.

The Mac is 2.5Ghz with 4GB of ram. I'm running El Capitan on it and it's doing very well.

Here's a shot of the Mac and the specs. Based on the desktop wallpaper you can assume that it has taken on the former role occupied by my 17" MBP, which is now serving as a content creation machine.

 

[retta283]

Nice laptop. I'm surprised it runs El Capitan well, as I've heard that it is really slow on old systems without an SSD. That thing is in nice condition too

 

[eyoungren]

Well I'm not using it for heavy duty stuff. It's mainly to browse the internet, some light word processing, email and text messages. In that regard it's doing well.

 

[LightBulbFun]

So, thought I would finally post this now that everything's settled out with this Mac.

Thanks to @bobesch I was sent a 15" A1260 he had on hand with a US keyboard. Took about a month and a half to arrive but got here in perfect condition.

The Mac is 2.5Ghz with 4GB of ram. I'm running El Capitan on it and it's doing very well.

Here's a shot of the Mac and the specs. Based on the desktop wallpaper you can assume that it has taken on the former role occupied by my 17" MBP, which is now serving as a content creation machine.

View attachment 792683 View attachment 792684

so you finally submit to the CrayonOS? very nice machine hopefully it has a good GPU

one of the few Machines that can multi-boot every intel version of OS X (with a little bit of patching)

(Macintosh plus System 0.97-7.5.5 PowerMac 9600 System 7.5.2-10.5.8 and a MBP4,1/iM7,1 (with a CPU Upgrade) intel 10.4.11-10.14.x im surprised no one has done this setup before?)

 

[eyoungren]

so you finally submit to the CrayonOS? very nice machine hopefully it has a good GPU

one of the few Machines that can multi-boot every intel version of OS X (with a little bit of patching)

(Macintosh plus System 0.97-7.5.5 PowerMac 9600 System 7.5.2-10.5.8 and a MBP4,1/iM7,1 (with a CPU Upgrade) intel 10.4.11-10.14.x im surprised no one has done this setup before?)

CrayonOS, LOL!!!

 

[AL1630]

(Macintosh plus System 0.97-7.5.5 PowerMac 9600 System 7.5.2-10.5.8 and a MBP4,1/iM7,1 (with a CPU Upgrade) intel 10.4.11-10.14.x im surprised no one has done this setup before?)

Pretty crazy that you can theoretically run every version of MacOS with only 3 Machines. Leopard on a 9600 might be pushing it a little though. I want to give it a try.

 

[LightBulbFun]

. Leopard on a 9600 might be pushing it a little though.

*cough* https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-os-x-10-5-8-power-macintosh-9600-fun.2144305 *cough*

 

[AL1630]

Well, color me surprised! There just seems to be such a vast difference between a Late 90s Beige tower and an OS from 2007. How does leopard run on that hardware?

 

[AphoticD]

Nice laptop. I'm surprised it runs El Capitan well, as I've heard that it is really slow on old systems without an SSD. That thing is in nice condition too

El Capitan runs well on the MacBookPro4,1 with 4GB of RAM even with a spinner. I found El Cap to run better than Yosemite and Mavericks. Mountain Lion is a little lighter, but if you’re looking for a highly optimized option, Snow Leopard was the finest system for this Mac.

so you finally submit to the CrayonOS? very nice machine hopefully it has a good GPU

one of the few Machines that can multi-boot every intel version of OS X (with a little bit of patching)

(Macintosh plus System 0.97-7.5.5 PowerMac 9600 System 7.5.2-10.5.8 and a MBP4,1/iM7,1 (with a CPU Upgrade) intel 10.4.11-10.14.x im surprised no one has done this setup before?)

I got as far as putting each system from Tiger (unsupported) through to El Capitan on my 4,1 here.

I plan on installing Mojave on this machine, so I just ordered a 64GB mSATA SSD to give it a nice boost.

 

[bunnspecial]

Nice laptop. I'm surprised it runs El Capitan well, as I've heard that it is really slow on old systems without an SSD. That thing is in nice condition too

An SSD certainly makes a difference, but an HDD isn't necessarily AS terrible as you might imagine.

Not too long ago, I picked up an MBP 5,1, which uses the same generation Penryn CPU as the MBP 4,1(although it does use DDR3 RAM rather than DDR2). This particular computer does have a factory 7200rpm drive, but it's not TERRIBLE on El Capitan.

I've also had a bunch of MBP 4,1s, and even wrote my master's thesis on one with a platter drive running Mavericks. An SSD perks these up, but they're not unusable without one.

The last terrible macOS experience I had was on a MacBook 7,1 with a failing HDD and 2gb RAM. It was all but unuseable when I installed the first developer beta of Sierra, although did perk up a bit with the second a week later and REALLY improved when I got around to installing 8gb of RAM and an SSD a few weeks after that(RAM took me a bit of time on that one, since pretty much all MCP79-based Macs want PC3-8500 and WILL NOT reliably downclock faster RAM).

 

[eyoungren]

very nice machine hopefully it has a good GPU

I believe, I've already shown you this…and the lane width is what it should be.

 

[Amethyst1]

@eyoungren: So, how do you survive with the ridiculously small 15-inch screen?

 

[Project Alice]

Nice laptop. I'm surprised it runs El Capitan well, as I've heard that it is really slow on old systems without an SSD. That thing is in nice condition too

This is incorrect. I have a 2.13ghz macbook 5,2 that I now have mojave on. It had high sierra up until last week. It runs amazingly, and is my main laptop. I'm looking into getting one of these MBPs, actually. I love the look. And they'll take mojave as well.

 

[AL1630]

This is incorrect. I have a 2.13ghz macbook 5,2 that I now have mojave on. It had high sierra up until last week. It runs amazingly, and is my main laptop. I'm looking into getting one of these MBPs, actually. I love the look. And they'll take mojave as well.

I have a 2GHz 5,2 that runs great with sierra. How's Mojave on it? Any major annoyances?

 

[eyoungren]

@eyoungren: So, how do you survive with the ridiculously small 15-inch screen?

LOL, I don't know. I'm dealing.

 

[bobesch]

LOL, I don't know. I'm dealing.

 

[Project Alice]

I have a 2GHz 5,2 that runs great with sierra. How's Mojave on it? Any major annoyances?

The only issue is Light mode, its stated in the mojave unsupported macs thread. But, my macbook is black. (I swapped the logicboard into a 4,1 black case) so I have it in dark mode all the time. Which looks great with the laptop.

Other than that it runs great. I'd actually go as far to say that it feels snappier on mojave then it did with HS. It has 8GB of ram which definitely helps. It had 4GB up until like 2 months ago and it was still fine with that, I just wanted it maxed out.

 

[Amethyst1]

But, my macbook is black. (I swapped the logicboard into a 4,1 black case) so I have it in dark mode all the time.

Do you have a picture of the machine running? Must be quite cool-looking.
[doublepost=1539006468][/doublepost]

CrayonOS, LOL!!!

If you'd rather have a little more skeuomorphism, Mavericks still runs the latest version of Firefox (as of today). I dread the day this is no longer the case... And if you want (some of) your websites to display white text on a dark background, there's Dark Mode for Firefox which I've been using for a couple of weeks now:

Anyway, enough of my off-topic babbling!

 

[eyoungren]

If you'd rather have a little more skeuomorphism, Mavericks still runs the latest version of Firefox (as of today). I dread the day this is no longer the case... And if you want (some of) your websites to display white text on a dark background, there's Dark Mode for Firefox which I've been using for a couple of weeks now:

View attachment 793124

Part of my issues with using my older MBP to web browse is that past a certain version of Firefox I begin to have problems.

I have a few older addons that never advanced into the age of signing. Consequently, I'm stuck on an older version with Snow Leopard and that version is old enough to begin failing at rendering pages properly. I don't want to give those addons up and with TenFourFox on my PowerPC systems they still work.

Additionally, I've used Stylish for a long time with TenFourFox and there are many dark modes available for it. I've posted a few of those pics here from time to time. What I will do is check out this addon on T4Fx and see if it works or not (probably not if it's a new addon).

In any case, I object to Firefox's manner of handling things now (forced signing of addons, forced updates, installing crap to the actual system itself, etc). So on the MP at work and this A1260 MBP at home I am using Chrome. I don't like my loss of keyboard shortcuts to websites (CMD+9 on T4Fx to get here) but dealing with Firefox is my alternative.

 

[Project Alice]

Do you have a picture of the machine running? Must be quite cool-looking.
[doublepost=1539006468][/doublepost]

If you'd rather have a little more skeuomorphism, Mavericks still runs the latest version of Firefox (as of today). I dread the day this is no longer the case... And if you want (some of) your websites to display white text on a dark background, there's Dark Mode for Firefox which I've been using for a couple of weeks now:

View attachment 793124

Anyway, enough of my off-topic babbling!

Yep, I'll post when I get home from work.

 

[iModFrenzy]

So, thought I would finally post this now that everything's settled out with this Mac.

Thanks to @bobesch I was sent a 15" A1260 he had on hand with a US keyboard. Took about a month and a half to arrive but got here in perfect condition.

The Mac is 2.5Ghz with 4GB of ram. I'm running El Capitan on it and it's doing very well.

Here's a shot of the Mac and the specs. Based on the desktop wallpaper you can assume that it has taken on the former role occupied by my 17" MBP, which is now serving as a content creation machine.

View attachment 792683 View attachment 792684

While I love the 4,1s, I’m afraid of their reliability considering the failing 8600m(s). What’s the usage consisting of? Anything gpu intensive?

Other than that, the machine looks fantastic, Hope you enjoy it for a while!

 

[AphoticD]

I bought up a bunch of cheap, questionable MacBookPro4,1's (EMC 2198 / A1260) in 2.4GHz (256MB VRAM) and 2.5GHz (512MB VRAM) configs.

Of the 8 units I have, 5 have failed GPUs and won't boot. (3 of the 256MB 8600m GT and 2 of the 512MB variety)

I have been scoping out the right gear for the BGA work and mentally preparing myself to do the GPU replacements as per @dosdude1 's great YouTube video. If I can do the job and get these Macs all working with new GPUs then they should be mostly indestructible and decent "Retro" machines to install and run Mojave.

In terms of memory configuration, I have not found any cheap 4GB PC2 SO-DIMMs. The cheapest stock I've come across (out of China) appear to be about (AU)$45 each (free shipping, min 2 of). From what I understand, these models can take only 6GB total.

Has anyone found cheaper 4GB modules?

 

[eyoungren]

While I love the 4,1s, I’m afraid of their reliability considering the failing 8600m(s). What’s the usage consisting of? Anything gpu intensive?

Other than that, the machine looks fantastic, Hope you enjoy it for a while!

• Browsing the internet using Google Chrome (here, Reddit, Yahoo email, Google News, some Google searching)
• Receiving and replying to iMessages my wife sends me
• Some email checking every once in a while (Outlook)
• Some light word processing (Word)
• Dropbox use
• Some online video viewing (YouTube or news sites)

That's pretty much it. I have yet to open Photoshop, but I may to edit a few pics I post here. Basically all the stuff my 17" MBP was being used for until it just got too outdated.

 

[dosdude1]

I bought up a bunch of cheap, questionable MacBookPro4,1's (EMC 2198 / A1260) in 2.4GHz (256MB VRAM) and 2.5GHz (512MB VRAM) configs.

Of the 8 units I have, 5 have failed GPUs and won't boot. (3 of the 256MB 8600m GT and 2 of the 512MB variety)

I have been scoping out the right gear for the BGA work and mentally preparing myself to do the GPU replacements as per @dosdude1 's great YouTube video. If I can do the job and get these Macs all working with new GPUs then they should be mostly indestructible and decent "Retro" machines to install and run Mojave.

In terms of memory configuration, I have not found any cheap 4GB PC2 SO-DIMMs. The cheapest stock I've come across (out of China) appear to be about (AU)$45 each (free shipping, min 2 of). From what I understand, these models can take only 6GB total.

Has anyone found cheaper 4GB modules?

Before soldering a new chip, I'd advise putting it in a dehydrator or oven set to around 175 degrees C for at least a few hours. That will remove the moisture from inside the chip, and reduce the chance of popcorning when soldering the chip on.

 

[bunnspecial]

FWIW, I've pretty much conceded to the 4gb RAM+SSD configuration rather than trying to go over 4gb.

It's WAY too expensive on these machines, and an SSD can take up a lot of the slack for a lack of RAM.

I've only owned one that had more than 4gb of RAM. It came to me that way(4gb+2gb). I had a friend who needed a computer and I gave it away since I hadn't used it in a while, then remembered a few weeks later. Oh well-the last I heard he's still using it like crazy, which is more than could probably be said if I still had it.

Incidentally, that's the same one that I wrote my master's thesis on.